David E. Sanger

We have spent so much time worrying about a 'cyber Pearl Harbor,'' the attack that takes out the power grid, that we have focused far too little on the subtle manipulation of data that can mean that no election, medical record, or self-driving car can be truly trusted.

In the Chinese view, the United States has designed its own system of rules about what constitutes 'legal' spying and what is illegal.

State oil companies in Saudi Arabia, Africa, Iran, and Mexico have often been intelligence targets for the United States.

When Russia's intelligence agencies obtained some of the National Security Agency's secrets about its own cyberweapons, it appeared to do so by manipulating a virus protection program sold by Kaspersky, a Russian firm.

We had a great chance in the mid-2000s to reach an accord with the Chinese on both energy and environmental issues. That deal would have essentially been that the U.S. could provide the equipment and expertise, and the Chinese would help close the trade gap. It was a huge opportunity that we failed to exploit.

As we put autonomous cars on the road, connect Alexas to our lights and our thermostats, put ill-protected Internet-connected video cameras on our houses, and conduct our financial lives over our cell phones, our vulnerabilities expand exponentially.